Dear SE, I am a Healer

[Kogasan]

Thing is OP people need to stop lumping all dps in a pool. Yah mage dps got a role in 4.0. But if you really look at the whole picture instead of pooling all dps. Ranged non magic caster only has 2 jobs atm being bard and mch. Magic dps has 3. Melee dps has 4. Tanks 3 will be 4 in 5.0. Healers 3. Only makes sense to give non magic ranged a third job to catch up to all the others doesn't it.

[Belhi]

Honestly Discussing it now will just be people who will list their wants, it will be full of presumptions and assumptions; if the eventual update differs from the concepts they commit to in their minds, we will just have more raging. At this point, we know the system is changing, we don't know how so can't say if its for the better or worse; we know TP will go away, this is a rather drastic move since even from 1.0 to 2.0, we didn't lose a fundamental stat. Clearly changes are drastic so without any useful information as a base, I don't think a dialog can be productive.


Of course if people will feel better by talking about it, then they should. I personally just don't see it helpful until the May information comes through.

The TP change will have very little relevance to Healers who don't use it at all now since sprint no longer consumes it. As for other changes, I have seen nothing to suggest currently that the changes healers will be getting will be any more significant than what we got in SB because frankly they are using the very same statements to describe the battle changes.

Discussing what people find the issues with healing to be now will allow people to look at any changes and judge if those changes are going to have a significant impact on the issues that currently exist. I would add, even when we get that information in May, any discussions are not going to have much impact since by that point it will be far too late for SE to look to implement any significant changes. Discussing it now at least puts it on people's minds. Beyond that I almost guarantee you that someone will post a similar post to yours but instead saying 'wait till you at least try it in game before bagging it' which is exactly what happened at the start of SB. Funny that many of the concerns raised with healing back then when the changes were first shown turned out to be valid.

I know getting new abilities isn't healer specific. But we have no idea what we are getting, It could be real game changers that bring uniqueness back to the jobs. Overall they feel similar right now, but maybe something will change. I'm trying to look at the positives.

I get what your saying and it is a valid point. I would love for you to be right though honestly I suspect there are fundamental issues with healing gameplay that need to be addressed to balance the jobs effectively.

The problem is, that they are saying almost the exact same things as they said leading up to SB and that did nothing to fix the balance issues. I would argue in some ways it made it worse. It is how similar this is to SB that makes me concerned. In truth a new healer job would distract me from this issue because it would at least be something shiny and new and part of me has serious doubts they even understand what is causing the balance issues. Without the shiny and new though, I find myself left with the changes the existing jobs will get and I don't have a lot of faith. Their handling of the issue in SB didn't inspire confidence.

[Tlachtga]

Thing is OP people need to stop lumping all dps in a pool. Yah mage dps got a role in 4.0. But if you really look at the whole picture instead of pooling all dps. Ranged non magic caster only has 2 jobs atm being bard and mch. Magic dps has 3. Melee dps has 4. Tanks 3 will be 4 in 5.0. Healers 3. Only makes sense to give non magic ranged a third job to catch up to all the others doesn't it.

Are we counting sub-roles of a sub-role as full roles now that need equal representation? Okay in that case

Tanks:
4 melee jobs/0 physical ranged jobs/0 caster jobs

Healers:
0 melee jobs/0 physical ranged jobs/3 caster jobs

Dps:
4 melee jobs/3 physical ranged jobs/3 caster jobs

I guess it "makes sense" to give us more tank jobs and more healer jobs to even out representation!

See how stupid this argument is?

[Wynn_Storm]

Are we counting sub-roles of a sub-role as full roles now that need equal representation? Okay in that case

Tanks:
4 melee jobs/0 physical ranged jobs/0 caster jobs

Healers:
0 melee jobs/0 physical ranged jobs/3 caster jobs

Dps:
4 melee jobs/3 physical ranged jobs/3 caster jobs

I guess it "makes sense" to give us more tank jobs and more healer jobs to even out representation!

See how stupid this argument is?

It is not a stupid argument, and you are really grasping at straws right now.

Whether you like it or not, we needed another ranged dps. We had only 2 in that category. Now it has caught up to the others.

[Enla]

Not really any point stressing later either since when we do learn the reality in May it will be too late for any significant changes and I think significant changes are needed.

Regardless, I think it is worth discussing even now since it is the reason they gave for not adding a new healer job twice now. Do we still not get a new healer if they still cant get it sorted in 2 years time or do they just give up at that point at balancing healers? Healing is, at least part of, the talk of the hour so it is worth at least getting a dialog going now to help build context for when we do see the changes so we can judge if what SE is trying is likely to be sufficient.

That's the most likely scenario, because it's pretty much the same reason we were given as to why a new healer wasn't available in Stormblood. Couple that with their statements about making WHM 'easier' and SCH being OP because of it's fairy - SCH is a little OP right now but I'd argue the fairy isn't the main reason but part of a larger mass of smaller interconnected issues- and it just smacks that they fundamentally don't understand how healing works in this game. Nor do they have a clear vision for what they want it to be either.

Do they want healers to primarily DPS and heal on occasion? Well then why in developer statements do they frown upon encouraging that kind of playstyle?
Do they want it to be pure healing only with occasional DPS? Then why do they make it so that most content is so light on healing that only player error forces healers to actively /heal/ for the majority of an instance?
Do they want healer balance? Again, why did they add a class like AST which cannot be balanced against the other two without either being far too weak or powerful? Thus starting us down this very road to begin with? (Not bashing AST, but it potentially the worse class choice they could have made if balance was their motive.)

Even now I'm pretty sure we're just going to see a repeat of the start of Stormblood with Shadowbringer's comes out. SCH will be nerfed so far into the ground it'll have issues with normal content again, while WHM will suffer from a fundamental lack of understanding of it's mechanics and get new kit items that don't mesh well with it's playstyle. Meanwhile AST will sit there and be in the middle of the constant yo-yo - or worse might actually get nerfed back to how it was at the start of HW. Then just like with SB we'll be thrown into a constant tug of war as they buff, nerf, and over buff to try and fix their initial mistakes to no one's satisfaction.

I really, really hope I'm wrong about that. But if they couldn't figure out how to balance healers in the two years they had to do it, I fundamentally question how two more years is going to make any sort of difference.

[Leomoon]

I am samurai!

[Tsalmaveth]

That's the most likely scenario, because it's pretty much the same reason we were given as to why a new healer wasn't available in Stormblood. Couple that with their statements about making WHM 'easier' and SCH being OP because of it's fairy - SCH is a little OP right now but I'd argue the fairy isn't the main reason but part of a larger mass of smaller interconnected issues- and it just smacks that they fundamentally don't understand how healing works in this game. Nor do they have a clear vision for what they want it to be either.

Do they want healers to primarily DPS and heal on occasion? Well then why in developer statements do they frown upon encouraging that kind of playstyle?
Do they want it to be pure healing only with occasional DPS? Then why do they make it so that most content is so light on healing that only player error forces healers to actively /heal/ for the majority of an instance?
Do they want healer balance? Again, why did they add a class like AST which cannot be balanced against the other two without either being far too weak or powerful? Thus starting us down this very road to begin with? (Not bashing AST, but it potentially the worse class choice they could have made if balance was their motive.)

Even now I'm pretty sure we're just going to see a repeat of the start of Stormblood with Shadowbringer's comes out. SCH will be nerfed so far into the ground it'll have issues with normal content again, while WHM will suffer from a fundamental lack of understanding of it's mechanics and get new kit items that don't mesh well with it's playstyle. Meanwhile AST will sit there and be in the middle of the constant yo-yo - or worse might actually get nerfed back to how it was at the start of HW. Then just like with SB we'll be thrown into a constant tug of war as they buff, nerf, and over buff to try and fix their initial mistakes to no one's satisfaction.

I really, really hope I'm wrong about that. But if they couldn't figure out how to balance healers in the two years they had to do it, I fundamentally question how two more years is going to make any sort of difference.

You honestly just captured my biggest fears with the upcoming changes. The interview scared me with what was said and how much they have said or don't seem to understand or have communicated what they want out of Healers. In their quest to 'balance' the class... just what the heck are they going to do to us? What is their vision for this class at this point? I LOVE playing Healer but the feeling I get from the devs, at times, is they don't even know what they're doing or want from the class... and after so many years, it's really disheartening.

[Belhi]

Personally, from playing healing in other MMOs, I think one of the biggest issues FF14 has is it wants its healers to be traditional healers but the healing abilities they give the players are too strong and as such the damage output from bosses is too bursty. Not too much mind you but to bursty. When you can heal a group up so quickly and layer on so many HoTs then the bosses have to hit like a truck to actually kill.

That is fine for some mechanics but not for general healing gameplay. It creates a ridged meta that WHM and SCH had in 2.X. It worked fine then but leaves very little room for flexibility and variety in healing styles which is why AST ended up being a weird hybrid between the too with an RNG support feature tacked on. Originally they designed AST to be weaker to make up for the support it brought but it just wasn't practical in the meta. However the moment it could handle the WHM role it became the superior option because it brought more to the table.

Part of the reason for that is simply that healing isn't like DPS. The more DPS you do the better. However there reaches a point where any additional healing you do is excess and pointless. Required healing throughput has a cap. Once any Job can competently manage reaching that cap, what else they bring to the table become significant. This is one of the major issues WHM currently has beyond it's rather lame Lilly mechanic.

Having weaker heals, as unpopular as that would be initially, would allow for more variety in healing. I point to WoW as an example there. They manage balancing half a dozen relatively unique healing styles and while it isn't perfect they manage it better than FF14 so far has with just its 3. This is because different classes are strong at healing in different scenarios.

The alternative is to make healers more about support or rather healer+. They handle the healing but each healing Job brings something else useful. Say for example SCH bubble puts a marker buff on a player that can be converted into a short term buff like 10 sec of knockback resistance or increased threat generation. Make WHM's damage spells synergise with their healing making them sort of the WAR of healers by lacking the amount of utility the other to have but being able to bring substantially greater dps.

Either way what they currently have isn't working in balancing and unless they either break the existing meta or work around it by making it less about fitting the meta and more about what else they bring, we are just going to end up in the same place.

[Shura]

The TP change will have very little relevance to Healers who don't use it at all now since sprint no longer consumes it.

The TP comment wasn't to suggest TP changes will affect healers in some way. it was a say that if they are doing something as drastic as removing TP from the battle system, it makes sense to reason that the changes across ALL classes will be drastic to conform to the new system they implement. Not to mention how the new skills from 71-80 will affect the game.

it's pretty much the same reason we were given as to why a new healer wasn't available in Stormblood.

I'm not sure why people thought there would be a healer in Stormblood when Healer, Tank and Ranged Melee were introduced in Heavensward. Melee and Caster didn't get a new job in Heavensward so they got one in Stormblood.

Are we counting sub-roles of a sub-role as full roles now that need equal representation?

If you look at the character cards people have in their signatures, you can clearly see that Tanks, Healers, Caster DPS, Melee and Ranged Melee are separated into different groups. Clearly SE is not grouping all DPS class into one group.

[Tlachtga]

It is not a stupid argument, and you are really grasping at straws right now.

Whether you like it or not, we needed another ranged dps. We had only 2 in that category. Now it has caught up to the others.

Way to completely ignore my post.

It is absolutely a stupid argument. You cannot justify the addition of physical ranged dps by saying it needed equal representation among sub roles of sub-roles of dps while ignoring the complete lack of it in sub-roles of sub-roles of supports.

DPS definitely did not need another job. But they got one, and it was a poor decision. The reasoning for it was equally terrible.

If you look at the character cards people have in their signatures, you can clearly see that Tanks, Healers, Caster DPS, Melee and Ranged Melee are separated into different groups. Clearly SE is not grouping all DPS class into one group.

Yes, they don't and its stupid.